There should be a law that electric cars can only be charged by wind or solar power.

@whowasthatmaskedman End to end efficiency for hydrogen is far worse than batteries. Same for total life cycle cost.

@ninalanyon The hydrogen fuel cell solves the battery range issue and allows the hydrogen to be distribted and dispensed using existing networks and technology. Plus eliminating all greenhouse and other pollutants from the fuel cycle. I am sure it will be replaced in time by the Fusion Mini Pile of something else. But lets not pretend the infernal combustion engine is not without its challenges. They are simply ones we adapted to.😷

@whowasthatmaskedman Hydrogen cannot generally be distributed through the existing gas-mains.

Those are gas-tight for methane (natural-gas) and suitable methane/hydrogen blends, but not pure hydrogen. I gather it atoms are tiny enough to squeeze past even the best, current seals!

However, the central-heating boiler manufacturers are already making ones running on methane (natural-gas) but easily adjustable to burn those alternatives.

No doubt it will come; but for now hydrogen as a vehicle fuel will be limited to those vehicles able to carry a standard industrial gas-bottle. JCB is in fact developing, if not already producing, earth-moving plant for hydrogen; but I do not know it it uses fuel-cells or direct internal-combustion. Similar work is also under way for railway traction.

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Back in the 1980s, well before anyone really started to take seriously a threat first postulated a hundred years ago, some engineering and agricultural institutions investigated wood-gas to fuel i.c.-engines driving generators. The gas is made in a "producer", as were developed for coal or coke in the late-19C.

This was for small-scale electricity provision in remote areas where suitable wood can be cultivated, typically quick-growing willow and similar, by coppicing. It would of course be "green" in that the exhaust carbon-dioxide is only replacing what the growing crop-tree had taken from the atmosphere, as its replacements will do.

It also could bring the useful by-products, charcoal and wood-tar (for derivatives including I believe, creosote and turpentine). It might be possible further to turn the charcoal into the same, energy-rich, fuel-gas, carbon monoxide.

@ArishMell I think we are getting s little off track here. We are looking at Hydrogen as a fuel for cars. Not as a household fuel..Last time I checked, pumping petroleum underground through pipes to service stations was not a widespread practice.😷

@whowasthatmaskedman
It doesn't do either of those things. The distribution network for electricity already exists, that for hydrogen does not. None of the existing gear that is used for petroleum spirit can be used for hydrogen.

It does not eliminate greenhouse gases unless the energy required to create the hydrogen is from renewable sources in which case the same applies to batteries and the batteries are more efficient.

As for 'the range problem', I have been driving an EV with 330 km range for the last four and a half years and range has not been a problem. More than 80% of cars sold in Norway are now electric, more than 10% of the cars on the road in Norway are fully electric already. If there were a meaningful range problem for most people this would not be happening. And of course the range is getting greater, the 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5,for instance, has about 480 km.

@whowasthatmaskedman I take your point and I agree with you in principle; but I don't think the uses can be separated except in a very particular way.

The utility companies cannot be expected to lay separate mains pipes for domestic heating and filling-stations. Both users would take from the same suppliers via the same networks. However, as you imply, hydrogen can be transported in bulk tanks or cylinders, and the latter at least is nothing new.

If we take the possibility of mains-supplied hydrogen, as that for domestic heating fuel is being advanced, it seems not yet considered for vehicles even where the gas mains already exist; but distributing the gas for either use needs appropriate new or modified pipework not yet built. A good many areas, even in a crowded country like many parts of the UK, do not have mains gas at all; for homes or for what few filling-stations still exist in those areas.

On the other hand it is already possible to buy cars fuelled with Liquified Natural Gas, although there are few filling-stations selling it. So we have that route.

What of the vehicles? It is easy for the domestic-heating manufacturers to be ready, and I think some parts of the UK are already trying a methane/hydrogen blend; but it seems a very different matter for hydrogen-fuelled vehicle development.

So far this seems limited to large ones like earth-moving plant and railway locomotives, likely using bottled not mains-supplied gas because the former is already available industrially, and the vehicles are large enough to accommodate the cylinders.

So is this a chicken-and-egg situation between vehicle manufacturers and utility companies? Three-way even because its also needs the service-stations and their delivery companies to be appropriately equipped; so perhaps each party is watching to see how the other two go before it acts.

I do not rule it out and it could be a far better option than battery-electric vehicles all round, and if buildings convert to using hydrogen there is no reason for garages and cars not to follow suit - it just seems to require a will not yet there.

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Burning hydrogen in air is not entirely clean because it does also create nitrous oxides, but that is also dealt with in modern i.c. vehicles by using catalytic exhausts and the urea-solution reagent sold (in the UK at least) as 'Ad-blue'. In fact, despite a massive hate-Diesel campaign, the modern Diesel equivalent may well be significantly cleaner overall than its petrol equivalent, if only by its higher fuel efficiency.

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The real difficulty though, will not be transporting the gas, nor its theoretical tinge of "green".

It will be of producing sufficient volumes of hydrogen in the first place. Let's assume electrolysis of water as the "environmentally safest" way, and making hydrogen by nature inexhaustible. Safest too, for a flammable fuel, because leaks would disperse upwards into the air, not settle in low spots. It will though require a huge, steady, additional electricity supply I doubt many countries enjoy. Some now find it difficult enough to supply present needs, for many reasons, and the demands from everywhere for electricity for a myriad of other purposes will continue to grow.

Nevertheless, I agree with you that hydrogen is the best solution yet for fuel, be it vehicular, domestic or industrial; short of course of us all eventually using little or no fuel at all.....

@ArishMell You can safely run hydrogen in domestic gas pipework. The pressure in the pipe is only 50 mbar. There are already proposals in the UK to blend 1
hydrogen with methane.
https://www.edie.net/hydrogen-blending-ready-for-uk-wide-rollout-next-year-industry-body-announces/

@ArishMell Your point is taken on the difference between internal combustion and external combustion and the results. What seems to be highlighted is the different development in different places. LPG (liquified Petroleum Gas) has been a thing here for decades, Many service stations have a pump of two and it was the go to fuel for Taxis. Sometimes half the price of petrol and able to run in a converted petrol Engine. I know in America Honda have hydrogen cars on the road as experimental vehicles out on trial with fleets,. And I know there is a plan where we are to mix hydrogen in with the natural piped gas to the homes, whether that will need modifications to existing appliances I have no idea.😷

@whowasthatmaskedman Oh. LPG cars have been around in the UK for a long time too, but availability from service stations is very patchy. It is a lot cheaper than liquid fuels though, largely I think by tax differences. Petrol and diesel are compound-taxed by having had duty payable on them for very many years, then when Value Added Tax was concocted (by the EU) that was levied on the original (retail + Duty) price. The profit element to the garage is tiny, and thousands of independent ones, even in towns, have stopped selling fuel to concentrate on car sales servicing, or gone out of business altogether.

What I know about domestic appliances was told me by a friend who is a Gas Safe - accredited plumber. He said existing appliances won't work properly on the blended gas, but if they cannot be modified to do so then the new ones are being designed to allow that.

It will be interesting to see how those experimental hydrogen-fuelled cars perform.

@ArishMell Both direct Hydrogen burners, (Not unlike the LPG cars) and the more promising Hydrogen Fuels cell electric drive cars are in development. The weight savings alone give those a massive edge.😷

@ArishMell
That's not what the Energy Networks Association says.

@ArishMell not sure if I would go to electric cars. why can't I message you? we have been chatting for a long time. 🍪

@trackboy I am sure I won't - I could not afford one, and having no-where at home to re-charge it, would be totally reliant on public charging-points far less certain and convenient to find and use than conventional filling-stations.

A hybrid maybe, but I doubt I could afford one of those either.

You can message me now, I think.

@ninalanyon Changing the whole unit, perhaps not.

It probably depends on the individual boiler or stove's age and design, and many of the newer models at least may need only some minor modifications.

After all, this is similar to when we switched from "town gas" (mostly carbon monoxide, distilled from coal) to natural gas (methane); and usually the only alteration was new burner jets and gas/air mixture adjusting.